Veteran sports writer Jim Utter covers NASCAR for The Charlotte Observer and its racing site, ThatsRacin.com. In this space, Jim writes about all things NASCAR and other forms of racing which may also be relevant ... or not.

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Jeff Gordon clearly wanted a caution

Jeff Gordon wasn't about to mince words when it came to his opinion on how the final laps of Sunday's Finger Lakes 355 at Watkins Glen International went down.

Gordon wasn't in contention for the win, but he was set for a Top-10 finish when he spun in oil on the last lap of the race. Several drivers complained of oil on the track, but it was not readily visible. NASCAR said its officials did not report seeing any oil on the track, only black smoke trailing from Bobby Labonte's No. 47 Toyota.

Gordon was asked about his incident immediately after the race.

"Oil all
over the race track, it’s pretty ridiculous they don’t want to end a race under
caution and put that many cars in jeopardy. I had no idea that there was oil
out there. I knew there was all kinds of havoc happening all around, but it was
a great effort by our Drive To End Hunger Chevrolet. I’m pretty bummed out
right now because we didn’t have the day that I thought we were going to have," Gordon said. "I
thought our car was a lot better than that. We started pretty good, but I knew
something wasn’t right. Then we tried to make an adjustment it didn’t go the
right way, went backwards. Yet Alan (Gustafson, crew chief) and the guys made
some adjustments there on that last stop and we weren’t good on the restart, but
man did it come on.

"We were just passing cars left and right. I was having a
blast. To work that hard all day long, come all the way from way back all the
way up into the top 10 and have it taken away because they don’t want to throw a
caution it’s pretty disappointing. I jumped out there to the outside of (Matt)
Kenseth and I think he could see the oil because he just gave it to me. I went
out there and there was just no grip just completely came
around. I went to
the outside and hit it (oil on the track) and just spun right out. I’m just
really disappointed because we fought hard today to come back to get what was
going to be a pretty nice finish.

"The thing is, I’m just disappointed at how
hard we had to fight for the position. The points are going to be what the
points are going to be. We can’t control what other people do. We can only
control what we do. And today, we took back control when we got off, and we were
coming. It’s just unfortunate that that gets taken away from you because NASCAR
doesn’t want to end the race under yellow (caution). I understand. You want to
keep it entertaining and give the winner a shot at it but there are a lot of
other things going on our there too. I think they completely disregarded that
and hey, it’s over now. We’ll move on."

2 comments:

I'm sorry, but Gordon benefited far more from the oil than he was hurt. Had Kyle Busch won the race, Gordon would been placed in a "must-win" situation for the final 4 races before the chase. As it stands now, it is still a points battle among the One-win wild card hopefuls. Today probably should have been #2 for Busch. Gordon needs to count he lucky stars....